The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp | Hacker News Reader

The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp

forbes.com

59 pointsprattbhatt20 comments

I think what is amazing about their story is that it goes counter to everything you read in the press about how to do a Silicon Valley startup.

1. They didn't try to raise venture capital. Yet venture capitalists ended up courting them and they raised money without even putting together a deck. The attention from the VC's came because they were executing.

2. There was little or no buzz around them, they didn't seek press attention even going so far as to not even have a sign on their door. Yet attention arrived because they were executing.

3. No vanity metrics, they only counted active users. Once users became dependent on the product they charged them. They didn't even need to spend their VC money because they were cash flow positive. This was because they executed.

Makes me wonder why Zuckerberg even courted SnapChat.

WhatsApp are primarily used outside the US - this probably accounts from the lack of 'flairs' and vanity coverage on them.

This is easy to say in retrospect, but there are always the two competing narratives. The other narrative gets more press because the primary way to grow is to "get more press."

From the articles that have recently come out, Zuckerberg and Koum sat down to talk in 2012, nearly two years prior to this deal, and then met a few more times. My guess is, Koum wasn't interested in selling yet, so Zuckerberg simply couldn't buy WhatsApp until Koum literally showed up on his doorstep.

I found it interesting that he is an older founder (37, from the article)and so a bit of a counterweight to "you have to be in your teens/early twenties to get funded/build a winning product" myth.

The Evernote founder Stepan Pachikov is 64.

>"you have to be in your teens/early twenties to get funded/build a winning product" myth.

This has almost always been a myth. Other than Snapchat/Tumblr & Facebook, what other 1B+ founders can you point to?

Amplified by the fact that news reporting gets much more mileage out of the 20-year-old college sophomore building a multimillion dollar business on a laptop in his dorm room than they do out of the 38-year-old who leaves the BigCo he has been working at for the past 15 years to build a multimillion dollar product to scratch a market itch the BigCos ignore (the classic Innovators Dilemma scenario).

"He and Koum worked out of the Red Rock Cafe, a watering hole for startup founders on the corner of California and Bryant in Mountain View."

Prediction: The huge movement of startups (or more properly the hype about movement of startups) from the South Bay to San Francisco is now going to be reversed.

And the reporter is kind of geo-challenged. Red Rock is at the corner of Villa & Castro.

WhatsApp indicates nothing about the migration of startups from the Peninsula to SF. As far as I can observe, that migration started going full steam after 2011. WhatsApp was founded in 2009.

I think its mostly a press thing, but subject to perturbations. Saying the biggest (and smallest in terms of employee count) acquisition in recent memory was right in the heart of MV will transport the press from SOMA to University Ave in PA and Castro Street in MV overnight. Sorry guys, tough commute.

Is it just a pure coincidence that the article was released yesterday or the newspapers have well prepared bios on founders of hot start-ups in case they get really famous, in similar fashion of having prepared obituaries on still alive politicians?

Hah, I was wondering the same thing...it is quite in-depth.

It was likely orchestrated by Facebook PR. One way it often works is to have the reporters work closely with a company's PR people to prepare the article, then have it embargoed until the date of the announcement. This is the case for many similar events, including product launches.

Why does this article say the deal was for $19 billion where it is $16 billion everywhere else?

"The deal is being cut for $12 billion in Facebook shares, $4 billion in cash and an additional $3 billion in RSUs for employee retention."

Um, it seems like every employee will get at least $10m to $100m. Does adding a few million on top of that really change anything? Either way they don't ever have to work again.

Nice story. Only think I think they are missing out on are the tablets. We (social circle) use hangouts more and more, because it's available to the few that use dumb phones in combination with an iPad.

The interesting thing about whatsapp is that it works on feature phones too. It's not targeting smartphones vs. ipad users, but getting smartphones (all platforms), and features phones on a single messaging system for just $1 a year.

Sure I would kill for an ipad or a desktop version but does iMessage work when your friend uses Android or Windows? What about Grandpa using an old Nokia? How about those old friends who moved away to another country? Moving from the US to another country isn't very common, but it's fairly common for the rest of the world - born in Dubai, Schooled at Cairo, works in France is very likely.

good for Jan! Hat tip to an immigrant success story.

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